Laser would be an enigma for an EW system because the beam is tight. Most array-based radar EW systems depend on multiple portions of the array detecting the same emitter, but with laser this is impossible.
I'm certainly no EW expert, but that sounds right to me. My thoughts, though, are that based on power/mass requirements of current lasers, anything they managed to put in an airplane would have to be pretty close in for a tracking laser to function. You'd have to have it in some kind of turret, too, just to keep the 'dot' on the target, and keeping it there if the other guy is manuvering would be near impossible.
Ground-based would make a larger/more powerful laser possible. But to actually track an airborne target... I can't really think of any way for the laser to self-track a speedy aircraft. That leaves us with two options for keeping it on target:
1) Visual. If it's close enough to see, shoot it with an infrared homer (Stinger/SA-7)--nothing to track _at all_, EM wise.
2) Radar. And if you're doing that already...
Just a note: your car's radar detector doesn't usually detect the laser, it detects the reflections.
If you're lucky:). That's about the only time it's good for anything, anyway. If you detect a direct shot, it's not like you can slow down before the subsequent pulses get a range-rate on you.
My Valentine has laser detection, but I never figured it would get me out of a ticket. Does a good job of telling me when a neon light is too close, though, like the 3rd brake light in those damn Trailblazers...
Well least missles won't need their own guidance now . They can just follow the laser.
Well, some of the earlier surface-to-air or air-to-air missiles did the same thing with radar. These 'beam rider'or semi-active homing missiles just picked up the radar return from the target (the radar being carried and aimed from the host aircraft) and followed it in.
The AIM-7 Sparrow was such a missile. While it was a decent weapon for its day (Vietnam era), it had one major flaw--you had to keep your airplane pointed at the enemy until the missile hit it. This is definitely a Bad Thing (since maybe the guy's friend is now behind you, peppering your plane with 23mm, and you're still waiting for the damn missile to hit).
The military still has a good stock of Sparrows, I'm told, and with our airborne control systems what they are now, they work much better. But they're still antiquated technology.
New missiles are either active homing (AIM-120C AMRAAM; AIM-54C Phoenix), meaning they have their own radar setup to track in (at least for terminal guidance--they can get a steer from the host, early on), or Infrared homing (AIM-9x Sidewinder), which seeks the heat emitted by engines or leading edges of the aircraft.
Not really much good in having a laser guided missile. In an air-to-air situation, we've already got active-radar homing for long range (which IIRC can be controlled by the host aircraft in a passive mode so the enemy doesn't see it coming), and IR for close-in (which is undetectable, save by sight).
Air-to-ground, well, JDAM and WCMD and JSOW are coming on the line now, and they're GPS/inertial guided; the Paveways are still around, too. (Yeah, I know--those are bombs, not missiles, but they accomplish the same thing).
Surface-to-air, you can paint an aircraft with radar a lot farther out than you can with a laser beam. Sure, it's easy to tell when radar is tracking you, but you can track any laser powerful enough to guide a missile, too. Hell, I've got a laser detector in my car.
All in all, laser makes a pretty lousy guide for an air intercept missile.
The Osprey's had trouble for a reason--it's horribly complex, and there's never been an aircraft like it before (outside the X-planes, that is). An aircraft that transitions from a conventional airplane to a would-be helicopter has a lot of control issues to work out.
The poster's theory that the ornithopter will somehow make this superfluous is a bit ludicrous. An ornithopter large enough to carry troops will likely be even more complex. Taking the output from a turbine engine and gearing it down to spin a prop is trivial--we've been doing it for decades. Even with the complicated transmissions and crosslinks and control systems on the V-22, it's still basically just a combinatinon and evolution of previous aircraft.
Taking output from a turbine and translating it to drive a piston is another matter. It can be done, of course, but entails much higher losses. The researcher says enormous amounts of energy are required for the small one, and it's, um, small.
The strength of the parts is another issue. Making wings and linkages that will drive them is going to be a challenge. As will performance after an engine failure.
Don't get me wrong, this is quite an achievement. For the unmanned aerial vehicle trade. I don't think we'll have the technology to make a troop transport, or even a one-man aircraft, out of an ornithopter for a long time.
Trying to foist this as a replacement for the Osprey is a bit ludicrous. Replacing a complicated aircraft with a more complicated one does not lend itself to safety or reliability, right out of the box.
Actually, lead's primary purpose in gasoline is for use as an antidetonation compound. Basically, it's a hack to allow higher compression ratios with lower-quality hydrocarbons. The higher the compression ratio (the factor by which the air in the cylinder is compressed) goes, the more likely the fuel is to combust spontaneously--detonation ("knocking"). This is why sporty cars, especially those with turbochargers, require higher-octane fuels. Lead allowed the same thing with cheaper fuels--they did not have to refine them as much. This is one of the reasons that most 80s American cars were anemic--hi-octane gas cost more than people wanted to pay, so low-compression engines were the way. It took the Big Three a while to figure out how to make power without the lead.
Anyone else rembember Stunt Island from Disney? I'd say it was released a good six or so years ago. At first glance, it's just a flight sim that lets you do premade movie stunts, and watch the film afterward. Even told you that you had the ability to cut the film from different cameras, add sound effects, etc. If you were really good, you could make your own stunts.
But people did so much more. It didn't have to be just stunts, you could produce full-blown movies on the thing. Had probably hundreds of aircraft and ground vehicles. You set them all up, and then used a simple scripting language to get all the objects and cameras to interact.
Myself, I made one very good (IMHO) movie that was about fifteen minutes long, after editing. Probably took me four months to get that thing done. Too bad that old 200 MB Seagate's drive servo died, I wish I still had that film.
But that was by no means the most impressive I've seen. Some one put together some kind of Star Wars filk that was about an hour long.
I keep hoping Disney Interactive will make a sequel. It provides quick and easy fun if all you want to do is fly around under bridges and stuff, but setting up, flying, directing, and editing a film would provide kids (and me!) some thought-provoking material that you don't see in games much any more.
And reading that again, it looks like I'm implying the B-2 is not fly-by-wire, computer-controlled, which is not the case. My point was the early Y-35 and Y-49 were not.
Computer control is not necessarily required for a flying wing. Do a Google search for the Y/XB-35 and the YB-49. Northrop designed and built a flying wing bomber in the late 1940s, no computer controls required. The -35 was powered by four supercharged Pratt & Whitneys spinning eight three-bladed dual-contrarotating props (two on each engine, one on top of the other, spinning opposite directions). The prop gearboxes were a weak point, so they switched to four four-bladed props.
Performance pretty much sucked, so they switched the powerplants to eight turbojets (this was the YB-49) which solved the performance issues. Around 1949, Northrop started to think about a civil version, supposed to hold 80 passengers, IIRC, with one big window in the front, the flight deck above.
A combination of (some say) conspiracy, political pressures, strategic considerations, and cost killed the program. Much of the research went into the early development of the B-2 (also by Northrop, almost 50 years later).
At any rate, none of these machines were computer controlled. Not saying that's how it will be on Boeing's machine (probably will be--the 777 is fly-by-wire, as are all the Airbuses), but it's not strictly required for a flying wing.
...some 15 year old kid noticed the CI connector on his motherboard, his chassis didn't have a microswitch to connect it to, so he superglued one on. Then he comes up with an idea to make it sound complicated, throws in some acronyms (for devices/protocols that would make it _very_ much more complicated than needs be), invents his own security company, and offers to license some code to run it for a small fee. Brilliant.
If you can't tell from all the other posts, this has been implemented for a great number of years on nearly all business-grade desktops, usually accompanied by a provision for a physical lock.
If this kid actually gets someone to buy into this and pay him to license his "software", I've gotta give him at least a little respect. At least he's not the one paying for it.
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Laser would be an enigma for an EW system because the beam is tight. Most array-based radar EW systems depend on multiple portions of the array detecting the same emitter, but with laser this is impossible.
:).
I'm certainly no EW expert, but that sounds right to me. My thoughts, though, are that based on power/mass requirements of current lasers, anything they managed to put in an airplane would have to be pretty close in for a tracking laser to function. You'd have to have it in some kind of turret, too, just to keep the 'dot' on the target, and keeping it there if the other guy is manuvering would be near impossible.
Ground-based would make a larger/more powerful laser possible. But to actually track an airborne target... I can't really think of any way for the laser to self-track a speedy aircraft. That leaves us with two options for keeping it on target:
1) Visual. If it's close enough to see, shoot it with an infrared homer (Stinger/SA-7)--nothing to track _at all_, EM wise.
2) Radar. And if you're doing that already...
Just a note: your car's radar detector doesn't usually detect the laser, it detects the reflections.
If you're lucky
That's about the only time it's good for anything, anyway. If you detect a direct shot, it's not like you can slow down before the subsequent pulses get a range-rate on you.
My Valentine has laser detection, but I never figured it would get me out of a ticket. Does a good job of telling me when a neon light is too close, though, like the 3rd brake light in those damn Trailblazers...
--Ribald
Well least missles won't need their own guidance now . They can just follow the laser.
Well, some of the earlier surface-to-air or air-to-air missiles did the same thing with radar. These 'beam rider'or semi-active homing missiles just picked up the radar return from the target (the radar being carried and aimed from the host aircraft) and followed it in.
The AIM-7 Sparrow was such a missile. While it was a decent weapon for its day (Vietnam era), it had one major flaw--you had to keep your airplane pointed at the enemy until the missile hit it. This is definitely a Bad Thing (since maybe the guy's friend is now behind you, peppering your plane with 23mm, and you're still waiting for the damn missile to hit).
The military still has a good stock of Sparrows, I'm told, and with our airborne control systems what they are now, they work much better. But they're still antiquated technology.
New missiles are either active homing (AIM-120C AMRAAM; AIM-54C Phoenix), meaning they have their own radar setup to track in (at least for terminal guidance--they can get a steer from the host, early on), or Infrared homing (AIM-9x Sidewinder), which seeks the heat emitted by engines or leading edges of the aircraft.
Not really much good in having a laser guided missile. In an air-to-air situation, we've already got active-radar homing for long range (which IIRC can be controlled by the host aircraft in a passive mode so the enemy doesn't see it coming), and IR for close-in (which is undetectable, save by sight).
Air-to-ground, well, JDAM and WCMD and JSOW are coming on the line now, and they're GPS/inertial guided; the Paveways are still around, too. (Yeah, I know--those are bombs, not missiles, but they accomplish the same thing).
Surface-to-air, you can paint an aircraft with radar a lot farther out than you can with a laser beam. Sure, it's easy to tell when radar is tracking you, but you can track any laser powerful enough to guide a missile, too. Hell, I've got a laser detector in my car.
All in all, laser makes a pretty lousy guide for an air intercept missile.
--Ribald
The Osprey's had trouble for a reason--it's horribly complex, and there's never been an aircraft like it before (outside the X-planes, that is). An aircraft that transitions from a conventional airplane to a would-be helicopter has a lot of control issues to work out.
The poster's theory that the ornithopter will somehow make this superfluous is a bit ludicrous. An ornithopter large enough to carry troops will likely be even more complex. Taking the output from a turbine engine and gearing it down to spin a prop is trivial--we've been doing it for decades. Even with the complicated transmissions and crosslinks and control systems on the V-22, it's still basically just a combinatinon and evolution of previous aircraft.
Taking output from a turbine and translating it to drive a piston is another matter. It can be done, of course, but entails much higher losses. The researcher says enormous amounts of energy are required for the small one, and it's, um, small.
The strength of the parts is another issue. Making wings and linkages that will drive them is going to be a challenge. As will performance after an engine failure.
Don't get me wrong, this is quite an achievement. For the unmanned aerial vehicle trade. I don't think we'll have the technology to make a troop transport, or even a one-man aircraft, out of an ornithopter for a long time.
Trying to foist this as a replacement for the Osprey is a bit ludicrous. Replacing a complicated aircraft with a more complicated one does not lend itself to safety or reliability, right out of the box.
Actually, lead's primary purpose in gasoline is for use as an antidetonation compound. Basically, it's a hack to allow higher compression ratios with lower-quality hydrocarbons. The higher the compression ratio (the factor by which the air in the cylinder is compressed) goes, the more likely the fuel is to combust spontaneously--detonation ("knocking"). This is why sporty cars, especially those with turbochargers, require higher-octane fuels. Lead allowed the same thing with cheaper fuels--they did not have to refine them as much. This is one of the reasons that most 80s American cars were anemic--hi-octane gas cost more than people wanted to pay, so low-compression engines were the way. It took the Big Three a while to figure out how to make power without the lead.
--Ribald
Anyone else rembember Stunt Island from Disney? I'd say it was released a good six or so years ago. At first glance, it's just a flight sim that lets you do premade movie stunts, and watch the film afterward. Even told you that you had the ability to cut the film from different cameras, add sound effects, etc. If you were really good, you could make your own stunts.
But people did so much more. It didn't have to be just stunts, you could produce full-blown movies on the thing. Had probably hundreds of aircraft and ground vehicles. You set them all up, and then used a simple scripting language to get all the objects and cameras to interact.
Myself, I made one very good (IMHO) movie that was about fifteen minutes long, after editing. Probably took me four months to get that thing done. Too bad that old 200 MB Seagate's drive servo died, I wish I still had that film.
But that was by no means the most impressive I've seen. Some one put together some kind of Star Wars filk that was about an hour long.
I keep hoping Disney Interactive will make a sequel. It provides quick and easy fun if all you want to do is fly around under bridges and stuff, but setting up, flying, directing, and editing a film would provide kids (and me!) some thought-provoking material that you don't see in games much any more.
C'mon, DI--SI2!
--Ribald
--Ribald
Performance pretty much sucked, so they switched the powerplants to eight turbojets (this was the YB-49) which solved the performance issues. Around 1949, Northrop started to think about a civil version, supposed to hold 80 passengers, IIRC, with one big window in the front, the flight deck above.
A combination of (some say) conspiracy, political pressures, strategic considerations, and cost killed the program. Much of the research went into the early development of the B-2 (also by Northrop, almost 50 years later).
At any rate, none of these machines were computer controlled. Not saying that's how it will be on Boeing's machine (probably will be--the 777 is fly-by-wire, as are all the Airbuses), but it's not strictly required for a flying wing.
--Ribald
If you can't tell from all the other posts, this has been implemented for a great number of years on nearly all business-grade desktops, usually accompanied by a provision for a physical lock.
If this kid actually gets someone to buy into this and pay him to license his "software", I've gotta give him at least a little respect. At least he's not the one paying for it.
--Ribald